1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a liquid processing system to process liquid biological material, and a liquid processing method using the system.
2. Description of the Related Art
Analysis of materials of biological origin has been performed heretofore in the fields of biology and medicine. Materials of biological origin often are liquid materials, such as biological material like blood or urine, suspensions for cultured cells, and so forth. Such liquid materials are processed using equipment capable of accurately measuring liquids, such as micropipettors for example.
There have been developed as of recent systems including robots which operate analytical equipment and so forth, to handle for analysis and the like test specimens hazardous to humans. For example, Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-54690 describes an automatic cell cultivating apparatus including equipment necessary for culturing, such as incubators and centrifuges, and a robot to operate the equipment. The automatic cell cultivating apparatus according to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-54690 allows a robot to perform cultivation in the place of humans.
However, the automatic cell cultivating apparatus according to Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2008-54690 is arranged such that the robot cooperatively works with special equipment designed specifically for the robot to be able to handle well. This creates a difficulty in reproducing the same equipment configuration and procedures as with analysis according to the related art performed by hand using this system. Further, the necessity for the dedicated equipment for the robot, and robot-specific consumables, may result in a large-scale apparatus configuration and high running costs.
It has been found desirable to provide a liquid processing system and liquid processing method capable of performing highly precise processing with a simple configuration.